Mark Twain called nostalgia “mental masturbation,” which seems a little harsh – a moderate dose of nostalgia never did anyone harm. In M.G. Vassanji’s novel Nostalgia, however, the quality is fatal – a fault in perception that has deadly consequences.

The setting of the novel is the future, and the future in future fiction novels is always blank and sinister. It is our world, only with all the things that make our world human and gracious – art and architecture, music, traditional religion, links with the past – removed. It is not familiar terrain for a writer such as Vassanji, whose characteristic work is rich in lore, growing out of the historic conflict between his Asian forbears and their East African hosts in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The story Vassanji tells in Nostalgia, set in our media and technologically driven culture, is advanced only a few years ahead of Vassanji’s present. The great trick of this world is a bio-technological advance that allows scientists to probe areas of the brain so as to create artificial memories. It is the old dream of Doctor Frankenstein come alive, or H.G. Wells’s Doctor Moreau, or Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World – or any number of classic tales of human engineering.

Doubleday Canada

For all this wizardry, however, no one has been able to cure poverty or violence. The hero of the novel, Doctor Frank Sina, lives a very comfortable life in a developed country bordering on a third world region rife with civil war, corruption, disease, crumbling infrastructure and other signs of social collapse. Even in Sina’s own country there are dismal neighbourhoods of crime and decay.

Sina himself leads a rather purposeless existence, engaged in highly sophisticated but basically mundane work. “I give people new memories so they can begin new lives,” he says. Note he does not say “challenging new lives.” Now it’s a case of just living and breathing as long as you can. The old adage about life and death – make way for others as others have made way for you – no longer applies. And why should it? “Should we kill the older folk now because progress allows them to enjoy life and live even longer instead of spending decades on sickbeds?” Sina asks himself at one point.

To enliven his days, Sina has a girlfriend Joanie, a couple decades younger than he. Joanie is beautiful and willing, but there is a problem in this relationship – Sina is convinced, with good reason, that Joanie has another lover – almost certainly a man her own age.

This introduces another major motif of the novel, the profound gap between adults of Sina’s demographic cohort – middle-aged men and women who have had the benefits of re-birth via technology – and the demographic cohort of Joanie, which has seen all the jobs and privileges go to the older generations. Among other things, the members of Joanie’s cohort have enjoyed no previous lives. “They have actually been born – to be beautiful,” Doctor Sina tells us. “Flawless, symmetrical, smooth.” Joanie calls Sina a “superannuated geriatric,” while she herself is a “BabyGens.” Almost contrary to the law of nature, there will soon be more superannuated geriatrics than BabyGens.

Spiritually, then, the world of Doctor Sina is in deep trouble. The rulers of this society can see no further recourse but to keep the biological lid screwed down tightly. “We need some stability in our society,” Doctor Sina proclaims, speaking for his contemporaries. A rejuvenated individual – or “juvie” – who starts experiencing memories from another life must be dealt with medically.

That’s Sina’s job: to stop the leakage of early memories (a phenomenon known as leaked memory syndrome, or nostalgia) and restore the patient to happiness. “Have I ever had stray thoughts that needed fixing?” Sina asks himself. “I cannot know, of course. But judging by my comfort with myself, I can only conclude that whoever my doctors were, they had done a perfect job sealing my previous life off.”

Vassanji is unusual among future fiction writers in that he gives a role to traditional religion in his dystopia, a role that is neither ironic nor condescending. In the darkest heart of the urban slums, for example, a presumably Christian congregation worships God and helps its members survive the harshness of daily existence. But the pertinent creed in the novel is not Christianity but Hinduism, which seems, by its very existence, to challenge the state project of reincarnation. It is the Hindu sage who offers a new life, not the scientist. “I believe in science and reason and progress,” Sina proclaims to a young Hindu devotee named Radha, but he doesn’t reject the spiritual consolations of the traditional, karma-based faiths.

Sina and Radha visit a Walt Disney World version of global religion called The Mall of the Spirit. “Do you feel like kneeling and praying to a higher being?” Radha asks, after they emerge from this mall.

Well, not really. Sina still maintains his religious faith in progress. “I believe in the physical universe and its laws,” he tells Radha. “They constitute my faith.” This is bravely spoken for a superannuated geriatric, but Vassanji plays fair – Sina is no fool. And neither are we, his readership. We would be a pretty tough sell (we would like to think) for the salesman of any creed, including rationalism.

The novel is very readable, though the characters are a bit stiff, and the mechanics of doom – the business about implanting memories – is itself a hard sell.

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